> Ok, according to my English teacher (Who is prone to sarcasm, so this might be exaggerated, embellished or just plain made up, I dunno-if you know for sure then lemme know) high school was created during the great depression. Prior to the great depression, you went throgh 5th grade or so, and then you worked. During the depression, you had full grown men who needed jobs to feed their families, and you have families that could put 8 kids in the workforce for cheaper, stealing jobs from the men who needed them. Therefore, the government created middle school and then high school as a place to stick kids so they'd be out of the workforce.
> Now, how useful is it to have high school? Are there many jobs out there that requires a high school education, but nothing else? (I'm not talking high school diploma. I'm talking if you haven't been through 4 years of high school, you can't do the work). Should we stop making high school required and have kids that want to pursue high school and higher education go and the rest enter the work force after middle school? Discuss :)

Ask your teacher why so many of our historic buildings were built as high schools between 1900 and 1910. The one in our town was completed in 1909. Maybe they knew that by the time the depression rolled around there would be a need for high schools. So they built them two or three decades in advance.

And, yes, we need high schools. Think of all the teachers who would be unemployed if we went back to just eight grades.
Howard